Perestroika
by autumnrose2010
Summary: The year is 1992. The Soviet Union has fallen, and Philip and Elizabeth have been recalled to their homeland. Henry, now a college student, is torn between his love for his parents and the only life he's ever known. A budding relationship with an American girl further complicates matters.
1. Learning The Truth

_A/N: This story was partially inspired by a movie from 1987 called 'Little Nikita' that starred River Phoenix as Jeff/Nikita. I thought it was very similar to this show so if you like the show you'd probably like it..._

"You're both liars! You're fucking liars!" Henry stormed from the room.

"Darling." Elizabeth followed her son and put her hand on his shoulder, but he angrily shrugged it off. "We did it to protect you and your sister. Can't you see we had to? What would your teachers and friends have thought if they'd known the truth?"

"You two wouldn't know the truth if it bit you in the butt!" Henry retorted angrily.

"Don't you _dare _use that tone of voice with your mother!" Philip demanded.

"I'm an adult! You can't tell me what I can and can't do anymore!" Henry glared at his father.

"I so wanted to enjoy a nice holiday with you and your sister before we leave," Elizabeth told her son.

"Before you _leave?"_

"We fly back to Moscow in a few days," Philip told his son. "President Yeltsin needs our help in setting up his new government. He doesn't have any use for us here in the United States anymore."

"So that's it? Merry Christmas and then good-bye?"

"We assumed that you'd want to stay here and finish college. After all, you only have one year left."

"What about Paige?" Henry's older sister had been married for three years and was the mother of an infant son.

"We told her together before she went back home," Elizabeth said. "She was understandably shaken, but she's taking it well."

"What's my name?"

"Why, your name's still Henry Jennings, just like it's always been," said Elizabeth.

"No, I mean, what's my _real _name?"

"That _is _your real name."

"Jennings isn't a Russian name, and you know it!" Henry glared at Philip.

"Your name is Henry Mikhailovich Yenotov."

"Why is my middle name so long?"

"It's a patronymic."

"Oh my God..." Henry went to his room and wept.

* * *

The first thing to do was to call Paige. His mother had said that she knew now, too. How well was she coping with it? Elizabeth had said that she was taking it well, but was she really? It had to have been every bit as much of a shock to her as it had been to him.

"Hello?" She picked up on the third ring.

"Sis? How are you?"

"I'm OK. What's up, Henry?"

"I just found out the truth about Mom and Dad."

"Oh. Yeah."

"I can't believe it, Paige! All this time I thought we were a normal American family, when in reality, they were spies working for the enemy! Our own parents!"

"It's not as if they had any choice about it." His sister's calm tone drove him crazy. "They were made to do it. They didn't have any choice. They're still the same people they always were. They're still our parents, and they still love us just the same."

"But they lied to us, Paige! All through our lives, they lied to us!"

"They didn't so much lie to us as just not tell us certain things, things they knew would hurt us."

"Bullshit!"

"Well, aren't you at least going to the airport to see them off?"

"Um...I guess so." By now, Henry was beginning to calm down slightly.

"Listen, I have to go. Cody's hungry. Please take care, Henry."

With a sigh, Henry hung the telephone up. He felt as if his whole world had just fallen apart and he didn't know where to turn for comfort.


	2. Saying Goodbye

The airport was still decorated for Christmas. Henry knew that the wreaths and poinsettias wouldn't come down until after New Year's Day, but that was really the last of his concerns as he prepared to say farewell to his parents, whom he'd always believed to be loyal, patriotic citizens. Now he wondered how on earth he could have ever been so blind.

Yet hadn't there been signs along the way, subtle hints that things weren't quite as they'd seemed? He recalled the morning his father had cut himself shaving and had uttered a curse word Henry had never heard before, the time he'd found a note beside the telephone written in the letters of a strange alphabet. He should have put two and two together long ago...but then, Paige had been deceived as well...

His reverie was interrupted by the arrival of his sister with her husband and son. Six-month-old Cody saw him and gurgled.

"Hey, Cody!" The sight of his nephew always melted his heart. He reached for the baby, who held his chubby arms out for his uncle. Henry held Cody close, enjoying the infant's fresh, sweet aroma.

"Are you OK, Henry?" Paige sounded concerned. "You sounded upset over the phone."

"Oh, yeah. I'm fine," Henry said sarcastically.

"We may not see them again for a really long time," Paige reminded him.

"How much do you know about Russia, Paige?" he asked. "All I know is it's really cold and people wear furs and drink vodka. What about our grandparents? Do you suppose they're still alive?"

"I don't know any more than you do."

It was almost time for Philip and Elizabeth to board the airplane. "I love you, son," Elizabeth told Henry as she embraced him.

"I love you too...Mom," he told her. "Have a safe flight."

"Get good grades, son," Philip said gruffly. "Make us proud."

"I will, Dad."

"You will let us know when you get there, won't you?" asked Paige.

"Of course we will," her mother told her.

Then they were gone, possibly forever. Henry had a weird, empty feeling as he went back to his car. Paige had her husband and son, but he had no one.

* * *

For Henry, returning to school on the first day of the spring term was like waking up to normal life after having the most bizarre dream imaginable. He looked around at his fellow classmates and envied their nonchalance. For them, it had been just a normal holiday.

Suddenly he saw her, loaded down with a heavy backpack, staring through an open door, confusion in her brown eyes. For some reason, he felt drawn to her.

"Hi," he said.

She glanced at him. "Excuse me, but do you know if this is where the Comparative Politics class meets?"

"No, it meets down the hall." He smiled. "I'm headed there myself. Want to walk together?"

She smiled. "All right."

"Hey, let me carry that for you." He reached for the backpack, and she gratefully handed it over. "By the way, I'm Henry Jennings." It was the way he'd always introduced himself, so it came naturally to him. He wasn't about to tell her his real last name. And that thing about the patronymic? He didn't even know what that meant. He supposed he'd have to ask his father about it sometime.

"I'm Holly, Holly Koch. And no, I wasn't born around Christmastime. That's what everybody always asks. My birthday's in September."

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Holly Koch." By now they'd reached the lecture hall and were looking for seats.

"Same here." She chose a seat halfway back and near one end. He hesitated for a moment, until she smiled and patted the seat beside her. It was still a few minutes before time for class to begin.

"So, are you planning on going into teaching?" asked Holly.

"I want to do research." It had always seemed only natural that Henry would go into political science, and his parents had always been fully supportive of that fact. Looking back, he now saw that they'd probably secretly hoped that he would become disenchanted with Capitalism and become sympathetic to the Communist cause. Although now, of course, it had ceased to be a cause, at least for the Jennings.

The professor arrived and began to hand out syllabi, and the first class of the new term was officially underway.


	3. Holly

She wasn't in any of his classes for the rest of that day, but he couldn't get her off his mind. At lunchtime he saw her bending over to pick up a fork she'd dropped. In a flash he'd retrieved it and handed it back to her.

"Thank you..." Her eyes met his and widened in recognition as she smiled. "Henry Jennings."

He grinned back. "Why, you're very welcome, Holly Koch." He nodded toward an empty table. "Care to join me?"

She shrugged. "Might as well." They took their lunches to the table and sat down. Henry suddenly found himself tongue-tied. He'd always been shy around girls and had never dated much. He'd gone to his senior prom with the daughter of one of his mother's friends.

"So, did you have a nice holiday?" Holly asked.

"Um...yeah, it was fine. How was yours?"

"Mine was great! I helped Mom decorate and cook, and and all the relatives came, even the ones on my Dad's side who don't usually come. Believe it or not, we even still have leftovers."

Henry wondered whether Holly's father had deserted the family.

"So, do you still live with your folks?" she asked.

"Until recently," Henry replied. "They work for the CIA, and they've just been sent overseas on a long-term assignment," he lied.

"Wow! Your folks are spies? Really?" Holly was obviously impressed. "How exciting!"

"I guess so." Henry shrugged. "I never really thought much about it one way or the other. So what do your folks do?"

"Mom's a supermarket cashier. She wanted to go to school to become a nurse, but she had to go to work right away when Dad died."

"I'm sorry." Henry felt very awkward.

"It's all right. He's been gone for ten years now. We get along OK, but I'm always gonna miss him." She sounded as if she were about to cry. "The day before he died, he said he was gonna take me and my brothers camping on his next day off. We were looking forward to that so much. We couldn't believe it when he never came home the next morning." She pushed her food around on her plate idly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to depress you."

"That's all right." He gave her a comforting smile. "How old are your brothers?"

"Marshall's fifteen, and Roger's thirteen. Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"I have an older sister named Paige. She's married now and has a baby."

"Wow, so you're an uncle! That's great!"

"Yeah." By then lunch was over, and he walked her to her next class, even though it was in the opposite direction from his own.

* * *

The house seemed unnaturally quiet when he arrived home that evening. He wondered how long it would take for him to get used to it. His anger at his parents had dwindled to a dull resignation, and he found himself longing for the way things had been before he'd learned the truth. He remembered what Holly had said about looking forward to going camping with her father. When he'd been younger, there had been camping trips and other fun outings as well. His parents had never seemed to be anything other than perfectly ordinary people. How on earth had he and Paige been fooled for so long?

_Holly. _If they became close friends, he'd eventually have to tell her the truth. What would she think of him then?

To take his mind off things, he turned the television on. President Yeltsin had just ended price controls, which was expected to result in some prices becoming three to five times higher than before. The Bosnian Serbs wanted their independence, and so did Slovenia and Croatia. Henry turned the channel to PBS and watched Sesame Street.

* * *

The following morning she smiled and made room for him as soon as she saw him. "Lots of stuff happening in the world right now, isn't there?" she remarked. "Did you watch the news last night?"

"Um, no."

"I remember how scared I always was of the Communists when I was growing up. I was sure they were going to drop a nuclear bomb on us and blow us to smithereens, but now their whole government is kind of falling apart, isn't it?"

Henry didn't say anything.


	4. Close Call

"You're not one of them, are you?" Holly asked after a minute or so.

"One of who?"

"Communists."

"Me? No way! I'm a registered Republican." It was true, and seemed to satisfy Holly's curiosity, although it gave Henry the strange feeling that he was betraying his parents.

"What about you?" he asked. She frowned. "Democrat or Republican?" he clarified.

"Democrat." She looked a bit embarrassed.

"Oh, really?' he teased.

"I really wanted Dukakis to win in the last election," she continued. "I would have voted for him myself if I'd been old enough. I was only a few months too young at the time."

"Yeah, me too."

"Well, your guy won, anyway," Holly pointed out. "Say, what do you think of Bill Clinton?"

"Uh, I don't know too much about him. Sorry."

"He's from Arkansas."

"I know _that."_

"His wife, Hillary, seems to be a very assertive woman. I think it would be good for this country to have a bold First Lady."

"Perhaps." Class started then. Henry found himself eager for it to end, as he couldn't wait to continue his conversation with Holly.

"My father was always a staunch conservative," she said without missing a beat as Henry walked her to her second class of the day. "My parents always took their middle-class lifestyle for granted, but that all changed when my Dad was murdered. All of a sudden we had to get used to living on a much reduced income. My Mom learned the hard way what it was like to struggle to pay bills, and us kids learned what it was like to do without things other kids had, like trips to Disneyland and expensive clothes and toys."

As she was talking they continued walking across the parking lot, until suddenly Henry saw a car barreling straight for them! Quickly he jumped out of the way, pulling Holly with him.

"My God!" Holly was obviously shaken as she watched the car speed away.

"Idiot," Henry muttered as he shook his head.

"Did you see that guy's eyes?" Holly asked shakily.

Henry frowned. "What do you mean?"

"He was aiming straight for us! He tried to run us down on purpose, Henry."

* * *

"Henry? It's me." The sound of his father's voice made Henry gulp.

"Well, how is everything? How's school?" Phillip's attempt at congeniality was strained at best.

"Um, it's OK. I met a girl, Holly."

"That's nice. How are your classes going?"

"OK. How's Mom?"

"She and I are both all right. Missing you and your sister, of course."

"I guess you're glad to be back in your _real _home." Henry was unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

"Everything's completely different now, son. The economy's a real mess. Prices are out of control, and there's no money left to take care of the poor. It's similar to what happened during the Great Depression in the United States in the 1930's. You remember learning about that in school."

"Yeah."

"Yeltsin thinks that privatization is the way to go. He wants to issue vouchers to help people set up their own businesses and promote a free market and competition. Capitalization, Henry. Just like the way you were raised."

"It isn't all bad, Dad. What's wrong with being able to do your own thing without the government controlling everything?"

"It's just a whole new idea for us, son. It's going to take some getting used to. Your mother and I fought against it for so long that I imagine it will take some time for our way of thinking to change."

"It ought to be easy." Henry gave a sharp laugh. "You sure faked it for enough years."

Phillip sighed. "We did what we had to, son. Please try to understand."

"Yeah, and lying to your kids was part of what you had to do, too."

"I have to go now, Henry. International phone rates are rather high. Please take care, son, and remember that we love you."

"Yeah. Bye."

He hung up the telephone and went to look in the mirror. _Am I Henry Mikhailovich Yenotov or Henry Jennings? _Automatically he recited a phrase he'd repeated every school morning from kindergarten through twelfth grade. "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

The words made him weep.


End file.
